Wheel of Fortune: Everything You Didn't Know

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings
you the secret histories and little known facts behind your
favorite movies, music, TV shows and more. We are your
gurus of game shows, your wizards of wordplay, your van

(00:22):
of whites of vwel movement, spinning our wheels until we
land on bankrupt. My name is Jordan run Dog and
I'm Alex Heigel, and today we are talking about a
little show you might have heard of called say with
me now, Will Will Price of Fortune Jeopardy.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
That's not the bit I should have had my air horn.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
I gotta have my airhorn app up. Look at this
studio filled with glamorous merchandise, fabulous and exciting bonus prizes,
thousands of dollars in cash, over one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars just waiting to be one as we present

(01:04):
our big bonanza of cash on Wheel of Fortune. Rain
Man Sweet doesn't rain Man?

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah? No, no, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
I mean, what can you say about Wheel of Fortune?
It's the game show to end all game shows. The
Price is Right comes close in terms of being a
chaotic blur of colors and lights and audience participation. But
the thing about the Price is Right is that it's
a constant stream of smaller games. It's like a televisual midway.
It doesn't have the same sense of ritual that a
show like Wheel of Fortune has. Wheel Fortune it's the

(01:37):
fun loving sibling of the show that it's always compared
to Jeopardy, the more restrained sister show, which shares a creator,
a studio, and a production company. By the way, Jeopardy
that's a show to aspire to. But Wheel Fortune is
a show for everyone. It doesn't require you to do
pesky things like no stuff. If you know the alphabet

(01:58):
and you can read, you're pretty much good to go.
Although I gotta say I absolutely suck at word games,
so I think I would probably bomb on Wheel of Fortune.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
I'm much better at knowing useless crap.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
For twenty six years, Wheel as those in the no
call it, It's like how Studio fifty four is just
called studio by those who are close to it, Wheel
Fortune officionados just call it Wheel. Wheel was the highest
rated show in all of syndication, held that record for
twenty six years, averaging thirty million viewers each week until
its record was bested in twenty ten by two and

(02:31):
a half man. Wheel Force is the longest running syndicated
game show in the United States, with eight thousand episodes
taped and aired as of June seventh, twenty twenty four.
That's almost as many as we have.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Really, no, we're not closing it on eight thousand. It
feels like it doesn't.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
It a little bit, but it was the end of
an era. Recently, as Pat Sajax said goodbye after more
than forty two years at the helm of Wheel of Fortune,
he was at the wheel of wheel hold for applause.
No uh okay. In twenty nineteen, Pat Sajak was recognized
by the Guinness Book of World Records for having the

(03:09):
longest serving career as a game show host of the
same show than anyone, surpassing the previous record holder Bob
Barker for the Price is Right and now Wheel of
Fortune's being handed off to Ryan Seacrest, a man who
is kind of the go to replacement for retired white
men of broadcasting. He stepped in for Dick Clark on

(03:30):
his New Year's Eve TV special Regis Philibt on Regis
and Kelly and Casey Cason for American Top forty and
now Pat Sajack. It's kind of a wonder he'd end
up with Jeopardy too. I'm sure Wheel of Fortune will
be totally passable with Ryan Seacrest in the same way
that Jeopardy's fine with Ken Jennings. But in honor of
the change, this seemed like a fine time to pay

(03:52):
tribute to this titan of the televisual realm. Heigel, what
are your thoughts on Wheel? I can imagine they're the
same as Gilligan's Island. None. Do I have that it? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Okay, nailed it? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (04:03):
No.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
I mean my parents were like comedy and sitcom people
like it was. It was the two episodes of The
Simpsons that air back to back right after I finished
my homework, and then something like Free Time, and then
like NBC Thursday Night with Will and Grace.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Now you're gonna say free jazz, Yes.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
That we had the family free jazz. We gathered around
the old radio and influenced by Coltrane and Albert Eiler,
we'd all get out of our horns and make terrible sounds.
And I say that as a fan of free jazz.
Uh yeah, I don't know, man, I just don't. I
never really The first game show and this is strikes
a personal corputtu. The first game show I really like
was appointment viewing for me was Who Wants to Be

(04:41):
a Millionaire?

Speaker 3 (04:42):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, of course that's it. None of the other ones
like really Ever, Now I'm into Jeopardy because I just
sit there and spit out the answers and get furious.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
But like, what do you get furious about that you're
not there or the other people don't know them both?

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Well, I guess yeah, I mean because you and another coworker,
Mine Lindsay ex former coworker Mind Lindsay a cup for
over at page six at the New York Post. She
was like, has like a similar obsession with Jeopardy as
you do. And she was like telling me about the
phone thing and like how difficult it is to get
past that. Yeah, And so I was like, well, no,
but I can sit here and get mad at the

(05:21):
dummies who did get past it.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
No.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
I mean, I was like a huge trivia buff. I
was on the quiz Bowl team and yeah, middle school
and like we did fairly well. I just can't do
math and I don't care about sports. So those are
my weak points. Yeah, and I don't think math should
be involved. Honestly, that feels like an ethics violation of trivia. Yeah,
or like, I don't know, can we call that classiest?

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Mmmm?

Speaker 2 (05:46):
Kind of saying that about word games too, though, like
I literacy, Yeah, that's fine. I'm comfortable tarring them all
with the same brush. How are you at word games
like scrambles? Yeah, I mean, will afford your stuff?

Speaker 1 (05:57):
I think you would do?

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Not well, I mean maybe, I don't know. Do give
me example of the question, like hit me.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Are you familiar with the basic premise of Wheel of Fortune?

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Oh? Yes? Oh okay? Sorry sorry sorry, sorry, sorry, Yes,
I am now Actually no, I'm bad at the field
of the blanks.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yeah, no, I am too. Well, that's the reputation, was that, like,
oh yeah, all the people that weren't smart enough to
get on Jeopardy going Wheel of Fortune? Not true. It's tough.
It's tough in a different way. Did you see that the.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Hawk Tua girl got signed with an agent?

Speaker 1 (06:24):
I didn't know what hawk Tua was, and then I
googled it, and then I read a sentence or two
and I realized I didn't want to know. Can you
explain to the listeners and to me what hawk Tua is.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
No, it's just this girl from the South. She was
just interviewed on one of those talking head TikTok shows,
and her preferred sex move, she said, is the hawk Tua.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Just spits on that. How did we get here?

Speaker 2 (06:52):
How did I just talking about people? Just talking about
people getting famous or getting on TV for like having
no discernible skills.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
Oh yeah, but enough about Vana White.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
I love Vana so funny.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Because like she was just like like I don't know
what your sense of women were. It was in like
your early childhood. I mean like but I just like
knew her name is shorthand for glamor.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, no, you're right, even like not even like sexual,
just like evening gown glamorous.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Vana White just like that was like just like a
Jaja Gabor figure.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
The name is so glamorous too. Yeah. I always thought
that was like a fake name, but I don't think
it is. Yeah, that was about it. Well. I have
a soft spot for Wheel of Fortune because it was
quite literally a formative memory. I was really into like
multicolored things as a baby, So I was just mesmerized
by the wheel, by the titular wheel on Wheel of Fortune,

(07:45):
all the colors going round and round, and back in
the eighties, the color palette Wheel of Fortune was really fun.
They had this red, blue, and yellow color scheme with
these big sun shapes over each contestant. It almost looked
like like a Teletubbies thing. It was just very vibrant
and bright and something that I could imagine appealing to
a lot of babies, and I was one of them.
I just thought it looked so cool. And I loved

(08:06):
game shows in general because they were just these bright, shiny, colorful,
musical fun events. I mean, I liked jukeboxes for the
same reason. They were again, bright colorful things with music
that just existed purely for fun. I thought that was
so cool. Gumball machines was another one, a machine that
dispensed colorful candy. I just thought it was crazy that

(08:29):
these things existed. As like a little kid, I thought that,
like machines were supposed to be very functional, and all
of a sudden you had these fun things that dispensed
music and candy. And that's kind of how I felt
about game shows too, So real fortunate. It made a
big impression on me and was I would go as
far as to say it was appointment viewing. And Sesame
Street also did a bit around this time called Squeal

(08:50):
of Fortune. Do you remember this?

Speaker 4 (08:52):
No?

Speaker 1 (08:53):
Oh? It was one of the more surreal bits on
Sesame Street, And even as like a toddler, I remember
thinking it was weird. They have the Pat Sajack knock
off muppet and the goal was for contestants to guess
how many times a pig in the center of a
wheel would squeal before the wheel stopped.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
I think that's an actual game they play in the Alabama.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
I also had this game as a kid. Do you
remember this called Mister Game Show?

Speaker 2 (09:18):
No?

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Do you remember this? It was just like weirdly advanced
for the late eighties early nineties animatronic game show host.
He he was like this animatronic robot that sat on a
little pedestal and his name was Gus Glitz and he spoke,
he moved around and he spoke and he had the
like the goofy game show voice, and he made bad
jokes and if you get a question wrong, he'd be
like dig a hole and crawl in like yeah. He

(09:43):
had an edge to him. So, anyway, all this stuff
we all Fortunately, mister game show, all this stuff sparked
a love of kitch and broadcasting, and so it's probably
not a huge surprise to you or at anyone listening
that I always nursed a not so secret desire to
be a game show host. Anyway, I assume that you
have no deep, primal thoughts about Wheel of Fortune like

(10:04):
I do.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
No, I really don't. I'm so sorry, man. I know
you love game shows, but uh I don't. I couldn't
be I couldn't be arrest.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, I couldn't be arst I mean no, No, that's I.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
Feel like that's an appropriate level of interest and involvement
with Wheel of Fortune.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
I think you're okay, okay, thank god.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
Well, let's dive in from Pat say jack surprisingly storied
background in Vietnam, to Vana White's hilarious Guinness record or
hilarious running with Nelly, the show's biggest fails, and everything
that goes into that big honk and wheel. Here's everything
you didn't know about Wheel of Fortune, Millionaire weakest link

(11:00):
that just sucked. I hated that. That's that one. I
can't get behind that one. I just thought the British
lady was so funny. Oh you would I thought she
was mean. She stressed me.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
That's a point. That's what I loved about it. She
was such against the grain of any host. I was like, ooh,
finally mean person representation.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
But she wasn't mean in like a funny way like
Simon Cowell.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
She was just mean, Yeah, we don't have to be
funny all the time. It was like saying, I thought
you people were.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Jolly wow, okay, I feel I feel chastened, like so
many Wheel of Fortune was conceived in the back of
a car. Nothing. I was really proud of that opening.
I'm sorry, I'll be more engaged. The show was the

(11:48):
brainchild of MERV Griffin, the same man behind Jeopardy, and
he was also a talk show titan in this era,
with his chat show running from nineteen sixty two to
nineteen eighty six, and he was also a former pop
singer in the fifties, so all in all, this was
a whole brained man. Jeopardy had been a hit throughout
the sixties, but by the early seventies it was starting

(12:08):
to run out of steam and it would be canceled
by nineteen seventy five before being revived as the version
we know and love today. It's all this to say.
By the early seventies, Merv wanted a new game show idea,
and he cast his mind back to his childhood when
he would pass the time on long car trips by
playing Hangman with his sister.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
Well.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
Discussing this idea with the staff, they decided to add
a twist to the whole Hangman premise, a roulette style wheel.
This was based on Griffin always being attracted to such
wheels as a child when he saw them in casinos.
I could relate to that. See, there's something very primal
about this show. Flashing lights, flashing lights and colorful wheels,
and yeah, it's exciting.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
I mean, it's funny that they picked like the two
simplest concepts from yeah, the Carnival age, you know, to
be like, no, no, we can build figure around this.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Well, Heigel, why reinvent the wheel?

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Ooh there it is? How many times is that kind
to pop up?

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Oh? None? Oh? Okay, I love this. MERV and high
ranking members of his staff actually consulted an executive at
Caesar's Palace to find out how to build the wheel
of Fortune wheel I got. I'm sure there's more to
it that I'm thinking. But also it's a wheel with
spokes on it that hit a thing that make noise.

(13:30):
I don't know. I'm sure, I'm sure there's more to it.
I'm sure there's more to it. MERV was truly the
guiding hand behind this show throughout its infancy, serving as
executive producer until the year two thousand and just as
he did for Jeopardy, he wrote the longtime theme to
Wheel of Fortune. Unlike Jeopardy, I have next to no
memory of the Wheel of Fortune theme, and if you

(13:52):
put a gun to my head, I couldn't hum it.
But it was apparently called changing Keys, and it remained
in place until MERV stepped down in two thousand, at
which point they changed the song on him. And I
call some kind of corporate studio Shenanigans on this because MERV,
who wrote the Jeopardy theme, famously earned somewhere in the

(14:13):
ballpark of one hundred million dollars in royalties for the
Jeopardy theme song alone, which you'll recall he wrote on
Marlon Brando's old piano from our Jeopardy episode. So I'm
choosing to view the Wheel of Fortune theme change as
a personal affront to old MERV after.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
He retired as the executive producer.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
That's the only reason I could think of, because they
didn't want to have to pay him a huge chunk
every time the show aired.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
Does it change keys that? I don't know it must,
that's just a piano bit. It's like a big band song. Yeah,
that's what I thought, because mrvn goes he's a big
band singer, so I think it's like part of his background.
They used the new song called Happy Wheels from two
thousand until twenty seventeen, and then they created another untitled

(14:57):
piece of music in twenty seventeen. But then finally in
twenty twenty one, they returned to Merv's original changing keys theme,
and all was right in the world.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
A musician, a singer, a composer created Jeopardy and Wheel
of Fortune, and I'm sure he created other shows too,
and hosted a beloved talk show for over twenty years.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
As you described him, a whole brand man. Yes, it does,
in fact, Oh, it does in fact change keys.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
See and you know what, my might shut up.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
I want to hear how they do this. That's pretty impressive. Actually,

(16:07):
that's like actual modulation. That's not just like a truck
changer thing.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
This is the most engaged I've ever seen you. This
is the damn Wheel of Fortune theme.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
I mean, I'm entranced. You know this is because he's
doing like actual jazz changes in this He's not doing
the classic truck driver where you just pop it up
a whole step like every lazy and hack in the
world learned from Diane Warren or whomever. Like this is
like actual modulation. He goes from let's see if I
remember my theory, he goes from deflat to see natural

(16:39):
for the B section and then changes a third time
to A that's smooth. Oh, and then it changes keys
like every section actually, or at least this guy's arrangement does.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
I wouldn't put a passel merv good for him. I've
seen jazz arrange I've seen like videos of like guys
at jazz clubs playing this song.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yeah, it's kind of I mean again, that was just
some dude's soul arrangement. But if the actual chart has
all those key changes and modulations written in, we're so
used to the like key changes that it's just sounds
incredibly hip man. People used to know things. We used
to be a proper country.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
Don't let the Apple podcast reviews get to ya, Higel.
You don't have to like everything. You don't have to
be this complimentary of Wheel of Fortune.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
No, I just think it's fascinating, Like you could. It's
like that thing I always talking about with like some
of these guys who are like first he was a
roused about and then he sold cars door to door,
and then he was a horse whisperer and he was
shot out of a cannon for several years. And that
was the biography of Todd Browning, who like and he
was a castrati singer and like this is and then

(17:48):
he directed four or five of the biggest Golden Age
movies Hollywood had ever seen, and then he died of
emphysema in Santa Barbara. That's like every all these different
old guys biographies. I'm like, yeah, he used to really
be able to live over quite a varied life in America.
Sor right, what we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
My favorite part about MERV is that on his tombstone
it says we will not be back after these messages.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
That's pretty great. Yeah, that's pretty good, funny guy, good
sense to humor.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
Everybody liked him. Made an ungodly amount of money on
you know, one hundred million dollars from the Jeopardy theme alone.
I can only imagine what syndication rights for that and
weel fortune were good on your nerv you probably a
lot of joy to a lot of people deeply closeted,
though I know.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
I should check that. I should check that real quick. Yeah, careful.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
In an interview with The New York Times published in
two thousand and five, MERV Griffin said, quote with a
sly grin about his private life, I tell everybody that
I'm quarter sexual. I will do anything with anybody for
a quarter. Moving on, Yeah. Merv's initial incarnation of Wheel
of Fortune was extremely different than the one we know

(18:59):
and love. In fact, this version from nineteen seventy three
even had a different title. It was called Shoppers Bizarre,
and the major difference was that players didn't win cash,
but they won fake money as they answered puzzles, and
they put this fake money towards prizes on the set,
hence the Shopper's Bizarre. And this was actually I didn't
realize this how the game was played until nineteen eighty seven.

(19:21):
Gettestins took the money they won during the show and
spent it on prizes at the end of the episode
instead of just going home with the cash and buying
whatever they wanted. And then in nineteen eighty seven they
did a promotional gimmick called Month of Cash title needs Work,
and then they and then they just kept it and
they just kept doing that and did away with all
the prizes. Also, the wheel in this early version was

(19:42):
extremely different. It was mounted vertically and spun automatically rather
than by having contestant spin it. I think both of
those things would have doomed the show. I mean, these
early pilots didn't do very well, and I think that's
a huge reason. Having the Wheel of Fortune wheel vertically,
it makes it look corny. It makes it look like
you said, like a Carnival midway game. Something about having
it like splayed out in front of you like an

(20:05):
altar or something.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
There's something like very canography. Man. Yeah, you ever seeing
those photos of like all those religious relics in like
Rome or far flung corners of Christianity in the world
where they have like somebody some saints toenail and it's
like esconced in this thing out of pure gold that's
like seven feet wide and you know, worth more than

(20:27):
the entire country's GDP at the time of construction. Simple iconography.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
But just like the small choice is behind it, I
mean vertical versus like having it laid out in the ground.
Something about it, something it looks more prime, almost like
it's like a fire pit or something. Everybody's gathered around
the wheel in a circle, and it's not just like
up on a wall hanging, you know, because it's very
pro something very primal about this show for me, clearly,
there's and the fact that like the contestants get to

(20:54):
spin it themselves, and that it's much more active.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
Imagine just having to like push a button or something
like That's I thought they just did that to absolve
them of like cheating or like, oh, rigging accusations.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
I mean, there's still a lot of rumors that like
Pat's able to like control it with like something in
his shoe or whatever. I mean, in the way that
people think that Roulett wheels, there's like you know, magnetized
or something. They can get the ball to stop at
a certain place. I don't know, there's all these theories
about roulette wheels being rigged and all these theories about
Wheeler Fortune Wiel being rigged. Okay, This early version of

(21:27):
the Wheel lacked the famously dreaded bankrupt wedge, but it
featured a wedge where a contestant could call vowel for free,
which is a nice little twist there. And also it
had a wedge where you could pick up a rotary
phone on the set and hear a private clue about
the puzzle that nobody else heard, which was like like
phone a friend twenty five years early. Yeah, it's really weird.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
But yeah, this initial Shopper's bizarre.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Pilot for this early incarnation of Wheel of Fortune, with
its hokey carnival theme, it failed to impress network brass
and after a second failed pilot, NBC Vice president of
Daytime Lynn Bolin really believed in the show and she
made a very risky deal with the network. She asked
them to give her one more.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Shot to put Wheel of Fortune on the air.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
I think they'd changed the title at this point, and
she said if the show failed as the previous two
versions had, they could fire her, and if it was successful,
she wanted to raise the risk paid off, and within weeks,
Wheel of Fortune became the top daytime television show. This
early version was on during the day. Now. For the
second and third pilots of Wheel of Fortune, they hired

(22:30):
Ed Burns, who's most familiar to me is an actor
and comedian, but to me, he's most famous as playing
Vince Fontainne in Greece. He's also on the fifties TV
show seventy seven Sunset Strip. But he did not impress
MERV Griffin. He kept chanting to himself aeiou because he
was trying to remember vowels and he couldn't, so he

(22:52):
just kept reciting aiou aeiou over and over again, and
MERV was like, sometimes but he never did and sometimes why?

Speaker 2 (23:00):
I don't know about that. But although is that like Pluto?

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Was that like a late addition where it was like
at the time it wasn't considered a swing case. Oh
good question, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
So yeah, MERV was like, Okay, how about we get somebody.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Who actually like knows the alphabet and kind of has
all that down pat.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
So when the show went that one, that one snuck
up on me. How do you find someone who knows
the alphabet. Certainly not in the hollyweird right am? I?

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Right?

Speaker 4 (23:31):
Am? I?

Speaker 1 (23:32):
Right? A boom the.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
Dice man man whither injury dice class.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
I thought that was Travolta. I thought you were keeping
with the Grease theme. No, no, never, can you do?
Can you do? Your ADG's geez? Is he from Philly?
He's got to be from Philly. Okay, wait, I gotta
look this up. He's from New Jersey.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, well, I explained so much.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
So anyway, this head Burns guy didn't know the alphabet.
He was out. I should make sure. Oh he is dead. Okay,
he can't sue me, and he probably is a lot
less money than the mer of Griffin estate. So they
decided to go with a different host once the show
went into production in December nineteen seventy four. Tell us
about early Wheel of Fortune host Chuck Woolery, a game

(24:17):
show legend in game show circles.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
He's a very big deal. I don't know how much
you know about Chuck Woolery. Not much. From the show's
debut in January of nineteen seventy five to December fifteenth,
nineteen eighty one, the Wheels first host, The Wheels first
servant really was Chuck Woolery, a TV game show legend,
as you mentioned, who also hosted The Love Connection, Scrabble,

(24:40):
and Greed. That sounds like a great like triptych for like,
it sounds like the sins you know, Blondes levels of hell,
The Love Connection, Scrabble, Greed, grocery shopping when you're on
an empty stomach. But did you know that Chuck Woolery
had a career as a musician in the nineteen sixties
as the singer for the psych duo The Avant Garde,

(25:01):
who had a top forty hit in nineteen sixty eight
with Naturally Stoned. What does it sound like? It's bad.
It's really bad.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
It's like a It's like a bad version of that
Kenny Rodgers just came in and see what condition My
condition's in the song from The Big Lebowski. Yeah, it's
like a bad version of that, which is already It's good.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
You're not not selling me on it, But I know I.

Speaker 4 (25:29):
Can never make a baby without stone.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
Chuck also got the shout out in Hey Ladies, Hey
Leases from the Beastie Boys in their nineteen eighty nine
hit off Paul's boutique I.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
Date women on TV with the help of Chuck Woolery. Yeah,
because he was the host of a Love Connection.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
We should do that record man.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Talking about talking about sampling.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Well wait a minute, though, did the Beastie Boys actually
show deference and shine a light to the people.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
They did, But they sampled a lot more creatively than
just lifting an entire vocal melody and making a backing
track to it. Yeah. You see that tweet where they're
doing the raven as read by the Beastie Boys No
once a pond midnight, Well, I ponduk and weary. I

(26:43):
can't believe that.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
I mean, I love the Beastie Boys. I do, shockingly,
I know that doesn't seem like I can't believe they
got as much mileage out of their bit as they did, honestly.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
I mean, you know, at least they had some talent.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Ye.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
Rick Rubin is really the guy from that scene who
got the furthest on the least?

Speaker 1 (27:02):
Did you know that ad Rock dated Molly Ringwald. They
met on the set of The Pickup Artist and then
he married. I can never say a name, I own
a sky from say anything? Oh far? Who's the sixties
pop singer Donovan's daughter, which I bet you didn't know. Yeah,
and then now he's married to Kathleen Hanna.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, He's just that's so funny
that Donovan also became like the sixties sunshine Bop guy
with cred all on the strength of Hurdy Gurdy Man
and Season of the Witch with very strategic uh need licenses.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Oh my God, and the David Fincher and Zodiac at
the beginning of the movie when the kids get shot
to hurdy gurdy Man, that's so good.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
That's an incredible, incredible use.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
Of that song.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
We're going long today folks probably don't keep that one.
What when those kids get shot, it's so good? Well,
I know what you mean. It's just funny, Okay. Anyway,
the vana to Woolvery's pat was a model named Susan Stafford,
who we would get to in a bit. Woolvery got

(28:08):
in trouble early in his tenure on the show for
hugging female contestants after they solved a puzzle. It must
have been pretty bad because people were complaining about this
back in the mid seventies.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
When were legal.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, I mean something something, Andrew Cuomo I don't know.
The outcry was so bad that he felt moved to
address the controversy on a show, saying during a nineteen
seventy six episode, I like to hug folks. I'm a hugger.
Is that where that comes from?

Speaker 3 (28:36):
No?

Speaker 2 (28:37):
I think he's as like a bit people being like,
I'm a hugger.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
I yeah, I know. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
I just assume I've seen that in like multiple sitcoms,
and like it's become like it's almost like TV tropsy esque, like, oh,
that's interesting. Someone goes that, someone goes for the handshake
and they're like, I'm a hugger.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
Are you a hugger?

Speaker 2 (28:57):
I have to read the room.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Okay, that's actually that's a better you are. Actually, I
think this is something people should know about us. You
are actually a lot more warm than I would have assumed.
And I'm actually a lot more reserved than a lot
of people, as I usually. I was at a meeting
today and at an office with people I didn't know,
and they went and to hug me and I offered
my hand.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah I still. I mean, you know what I get
worse is the pound handshake thing. I go, oh, I
can't Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, oh, never feel so white
in those moments. As in those moments he said a
lot of people are handshakers. I'm a hugger. And one
more thing, if you were here, I'd hug you too.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
That sounds like a threat.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Yeah, so ominous. If you were here, I'd hug If
you read it like the Werner herdgwords, I like to
hug folks. I'm a hugger. Lots of people are handshakers.
I am a hugger. Wait it's somebody was more thing.
If you were here, I'd hug you too.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
Somebody was telling me last night that he was on
Conan's podcast and he was talking about what was some
some dumb movie that he really liked or some dumb
TV show.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
He pops up in the most random places. Now, I mean,
he's in the He's in one of the Jack Reacher movies.
He was on an episode of, or maybe multiple ones
of the Baby Yoda star Wars thing, because there's like
a clip of him going, I would like to see
the baby so amazing.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Oh it's honey Boobo. It was honey boobo. He loved
honey Boobo.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Yeah, that tracks. I find her utterly fascinating. That's it's
edging into Arnold. It's a regional distinction. Woolvery hosted from
the show's premiere nineteen seventy five until Christmas Day nineteen
eighty one, except for one week in August of nineteen
eighty when a pre Jeopardy Alex Trebek filled in when
Chuck got sick. What are the many aspects that Wheel

(30:48):
and JEP have in common? Ultimately, as with so many
of us, Woolry's avarice would be his downfall. At least
It's fine. I've never been motivated by money in my life.
I'm a position for Christ's sake and writer. Ultimately, as
with so many of us, Woolery's avarice would be his downfall,
at least as far as Wheel of Fortune is concerned.

(31:09):
By nineteen eighty one, Wheel had started to do so
well in the ratings that had bested the goliath of
game shows, Family Feud, and as such, Woolery felt like
it was time to renegotiate his salary and get something
on par with what Family Feud host Richard Dawson was making.
In numerical terms, he wanted to raise from sixty five
thousand dollars a year, which seems very low even when

(31:29):
you adjusted for inflation. It's two hundred twenty five thousand,
which is like what the Friends guys were making. Weren't
they making a mill an episode? Them and Frasier? And
he wanted to go up to half a million MERV
Griffis said he would go as high as four hundred thousand,
which is still an enormous percentage increase. But wool We
really wanted to hold out for that extra hundred grand,

(31:52):
and the network was so desperate to keep things running
smoothly with their cash cow that they stepped in and
said they'd be willing to pay the extra one hundred grand,
presumably rather than Griffin having to pay it. But Griffin
refused on principle, apparently threatening to bring the show to
a rivaled network, and ultimately the door hit Woolry, where
the Good Lord split him. They landed on The Love

(32:13):
Connection a short time later.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
Yeah, I'm a little confused, and I don't really think
it was that interesting to get into, like who owned
what of this show? Like why MERV was able to
be like I can take this to another network whenever
I want.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
I Yes, in the way the contracts. Yeah, no, I
mean brother.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Yeah. This is clearly a smart man, so I would
imagine that he had smart lawyers, which is all the
more reason why I should be careful what I say
about him in this episode.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with
more too much information.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
After these messages, the new host and gig for Real
Fortune went, of course to Pat Say Jack, who made
his debut on December twenty eighth, nineteen eighty one. He

(33:08):
opens with a medium funny joke making fun of his
short stature. I'll probably spice in his whole little intro here.
It was very sweet. Here is your new host.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
Hey John, Hey there, Maggy, Jack, Park, Morry, everyone, Welcome to.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Reel of Fortune.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
Please do not adjust your sets at home. Chuck Willery
is not shrunk. A lot of people are playing with
a vertical hold right now. As Jack mentioned, my name
is Pat Say Jack, and I've been fortunate enough to
wander on to the set of a very successful program
has been for a long time. One of the big
reasons for that success, of.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
Course, was Chuck Willery.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
Most of you know by now Chuck has decided to
leave the show to concentrate on other areas, and his
career is very talented actor and singer and songwriter. So
I want to take a minute, and I know everyone
in the studio does, and all his fans around the
country to wish Chuck nothing but the best for future
success and happiness. Chuck, this is for you.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
He's very self deprecating, which I think is perfect because
at the end of the day, that's what all the
best hosts are. Your job as a host isn't to
be the most dynamic person on the screen. It's to
make the other people around you look good and throw
to them and support them. That's why Jimmy Fallon sucks.
He's good at laughing, but he you know, and James Cordon.

(34:22):
All this generation they don't know how to defer.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
They always gotta mug their way in and sing or
play guitar and grin.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
People like Carson and Dick Cavitt did it right though,
because they they would show that there was a lot
more going on underneath the surface. But they were aware
that they had you know, orson Wells there, Alfred Hitchcock
or whoever Carson had on Robert Williams. It's an art.
It's an art. It is master.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
Yeah, and there's definitely something else about like you know,
attention spans following by the way sidon as like you know,
talk shows died when the Internet really came out because
you didn't have you could just suddenly go to Twitter
and find out everyone's thoughts about everything, right, like so
true a celebrity telling you anymore. So they immediately had
to pivot to all the clickbaity. Nobody wants to hear
two people talk anymore. That's why we're not getting paid.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
This was a pro move from say Jack, because he
wanted to be doing this his entire life. He fostered
an interest in broadcasting since he was a little boy
when he would borrow wooden spoons from the kitchen and
pretend they were microphones, which is adorable and also seems
like something I would have done. One of his earliest
gigs was at a Spanish language radio station in his

(35:31):
hometown of Chicago in the mid sixties. Despite the fact
that he spoke no Spanish, which always confused him, he
was hired to come in and do a news briefing
in English once an hour from midnight until six am.
Oof he would tell The New York Times two decades
later to this day, I do not know why he
was just that good. They wanted that, Sayjack magic, even

(35:55):
if they had no idea what he was saying. This
was in the mid sixties and fearing the draft to say,
Jack enlisted in the Armed Forces because he believed that
that would give him more of a say over where
he was stationed and what sort of job he did.
Didn't quite work out for him. After getting bounced around
in a bunch of different jobs and different basis stateside,
he wound up as a DJ on the Armed Forces

(36:16):
Radio in Saigon, taking over the Dawnbusters radio show that
had previously been hosted by Adrian Cronauer, also known as
the guy Robin Williams plays in Good Morning Vietnam. In fact,
Pat Sajack maintained Kronauer's tradition of kicking off each episode
with the hardy you gotta say it with me now,
you're not going to do it right. It's going to

(36:36):
make me mad. Good mask singer, all right anyway, ah.
Pat Sajack wrote about his experience for the Armed Forces
Radio and a piece for USO dot Org a few
years ago.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Which I thought was very nice.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
He said, I used to feel guilty about my relatively
soft duty.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Oh Man, probably just the deydration talking, But God, is
that funny.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
After all, I was billeted in a hotel and there
were plenty of nice restaurants around. But I always thought
a little better when I met guys who came into
town from the field and thanked us for bringing them
a little bit of home. I always thought it was
strange that they should be thanking me, given what so
many of them are going through on a daily basis.
But they reminded me of the importance of providing entertainment
to those who serve something the US ow and those

(37:42):
very well. To this day, my fellow vets from that
era repeat those thank yous, and it's really very humbling.
My respect for those who serve has stayed with me
throughout my life, and my time in the military, particularly
my time in Vietnam, are among the things in my
life of which I'm the most proud. That's very nice.
But there's a moment from his time with the Armed
Forces Network that he is not that proud of. I'm

(38:04):
speaking of the time in nineteen sixty nine when he
accidentally interrupted President Nixon's Christmas message to the troops, he
continues in the piece for THEUSO dot Org. Apparently, what
I deemed to be the close to the speech was
merely an effective pause, and Nixon's paper shuffling was nothing
more than a short break to make matters worse. I
heard Nixon say, and now I'd like to speak directly

(38:26):
to the men and women serving our country in Vietnam,
to say the least. I had a quick decision to make.
Should I jump back on the air and confess that
I'd cut off the leader of the free world in
the middle of his address, or should I just keep
playing music and hope for the best. It was as
if a little angel was perched on one shoulder and
a little devil on the other. The angel, of course,
was right. The President was speaking, and it was my

(38:48):
duty to reconnect him. But I had to admit that
the devil was making some pretty good points too. His
mad argument went like this. Because the CBS feed was
coming directly into the AFN studios, I was the only
one monitoring it. So I was literally the only human
being in the world who realized that the people the
President thought he was speaking to couldn't actually hear him.

(39:09):
So really, what was the harm true? He was sending
holiday greetings to the troops and promising to bring them
home soon. But they were already listening to the nineteen
ten Fruit Gum Company singing one, two three Red Light
a terrible song. Heck, now I'd be cutting off that
fine song in the middle. And two wrongs don't make
a right, do they? And by the time I explained
what had happened, he might be finished anyway. In short,

(39:32):
the devil made me not do it. Flip Wilson joke. Yeah,
it is with pain and embarrassment that I confess the
secret of my Pat Sajak Vietnam DJ days that my.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
Comrades in Vietnam never heard the.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
President's words to them back in Christmas nineteen sixty nine.
So very belatedly, I want you all to know that
Richard M. Nixon wishes you a very merry Christmas.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
That's great. I would have preferred it if he would
have said, like, Richard M. Nixon wants you to know
that you're some of the finest meat this country has
ever thrown into the industrial military complex. Throw your bodies
onto the agent Orange.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Weile tell us about Pat Sajack's days in the Pentagon.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
It just gets weirder and weirder. Yeah, I wonder if
he ever ran into William Peter Bladdie crawling around the Pentagon.
After his stint in Vietnam, Sajack returned to the US
to work in what has been described as the bowels
of the Pentagon, running slide projectors for military officials. He
then bounced around several radio networks and then climbed the

(40:34):
ranks in a local Nashville TV station, WSMTV, ultimately taking
over as weatherman. His tenure there would lead to a
bit of music history. Apparently, Nashville songwriter Ben Peters was
watching one day when Sayjack made a comment about daytime
highs and nighttime lows. Peters liked that turn phrase, which
inspired him to write the song Daytime Friends, which became

(40:56):
a number one for Kenny Rogers in nineteen seventy seven.
Love Kenny Rogers.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
Yeah, it's just hilarious the country singer Chicken Magnate. Come on,
that's a Springsteen song.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Say Jack made an impression was poached for NBC's Los
Angeles affiliate, where he caught the eye of MERV Griffin,
who enjoyed his odd sense of humor. When he needed
a replacement for Wheel of Fortune, he went to Say Jack.
The network brass, on the other hand, were not thrilled
the idea of handing their game show cash Cow over
to a weatherman, and a local one at that, but

(41:30):
Merv dug his heels in as he was wont to do, apparently,
and once again ended his meeting within NBC executives by
saying he would stop taping new episodes until they greenlit Sayjack.
Say Jack was in short order hired. The show became
such a success that in nineteen eighty three, Griffin spun
the show off into a syndicated nighttime edition to supplement

(41:52):
the network daytime edition. Real Fortune was a daytime show.
Since in the seventies and early eighties, game shows were
seen as daytime phenomenon like the Price is right, Let's
make a deal, and so forth, the top tier daytime
shows were given additional spots in primetime, usually with better
prizes and more money, which is what happened with Wheel.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
I recently discovered that they did this with the Prices right.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
I guess there's been a nighttime version of the Prices
Right for the last like five years that I had
no idea about until I was visiting my parents at Christmas,
and it's like the only time I ever watched Network TV,
And yeah, I didn't realize they were still doing that.
So if you're a big fan of prices, right, but
have a job, you're in luck. And you're not a

(42:37):
kid home sick from school, you're in luck. All this
to say started in nineteen eighty three. There were two
editions of Wheel every day. Could you think think of
a time two editions of Wheel every day? We didn't
know how good we had it.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
A man the seventies, Jimmy. I actually learned today that
Jimmy Carter created the initial version of what become the Contras.
Like right before he left office, he showed the seeds
for the Contras. Everyone blames Reagan, and they rightly should,
but it was actually Carter who got that all started.
I didn't know that long dying Peanut Farmers, Okay, what

(43:18):
are we talking about? By nineteen eighty six, the show
was bringing in one hundred million dollars a year and
on ratings high with thirty million viewers, twice as many
as the next highest syndicated show, Mash.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
That's nuts. It's double mash.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
That's a share, but the whole two show thing would
be a problem. In nineteen eighty nine, when Sayjack made
the ill fated decision to host his own talk show,
game shows, you see were small potatoes to say Jack.
He'd grown up idolizing the great Jack Parr, one of
the early Tonight Show hosts. You know, I actually I
read we've read about Jack Parr, and I read how
about how he used to memorize his monologues. He would

(43:55):
write them in print and then long hand cursive and
then type them. And so I actually used to do
that when I had to memorize stuff. Wow, that's really cool.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
Ohs not as any kind of like que card, but
just to that once he wrote it.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
It was just by himself. Yeah, wow, that's really cool.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
I had a teacher in high school who before every
exam he gave us a little tiny piece of paper
and said, you can take this piece of paper into
the exam write whatever you need onto it. Oh yeah,
And by the time you had done that everything he needed,
you never looked at it, because yeah, it was really smart.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
They got our asses. Uh. When Parr's successor, Johnny Carson,
began to intimate that he was slowing down. In the
late eighties, CBS decided that they wanted to start a
late night talk show of their own to have up
and running by the time Carson hung it up. This
seemed like a good idea in theory, but in practice
it just meant going head to head against Johnny Carson
with a fledgling show, which was a suicide mission, as

(44:53):
we will find out after the sentence. For this mission,
CBS approached Sayjack, who stepped back from the net to
work daytime edition of Wheel in order to take a
shot at his dreams. The daytime edition was taken over
by Bob Gohen, later of entertainment Tonight Fame, until it
was canceled in nineteen ninety one. Say Jack continued to
host the primetime version. This all seems like weird TV

(45:16):
network stuff. There are two versions of the same show
at different times with different hosts, and ironically, the director
of Wheel of Fortune in this era was Dick Carson,
Johnny's brother. That's weird, ah nepotism A. CBS went really
hard for the Pat Sajack Show. In an interview held
a month before premiered, say Jack said he was quote
not looking to raise the level of TV, but stated

(45:37):
his intent to quote steal liberally from talk shows past
in present, and he would do exactly that. The ninety
minute program had all the trimmings of a Carson esque
late night chat show. There was a sidekick, an announcer,
a band. The first guest was Chevy Chase, who, in
true Chevy fashion, interrupted the next guest's interview on the
couch by raising his hand and asking if he could

(45:58):
use the bathroom's funny. This would end up being an
ironic choice of a first guest, considering Chevy would go
on to have an even bigger talk show bomb on
Fox just a few years later. Man talk shows on
Foxes where they really sent people to die. They did
that with.

Speaker 1 (46:12):
Poor uh Joan Rivers too. Yeah. Joan Rivers, Well, that
was after she got passed over for the UH for Carson. Yeah,
because she was his official guest host. And then ye,
when she learned that his like shortlist for potential successes,
she was not even in the running for that. She
said it was like one of the worst moments of
her life. She felt so betrayed.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
I wrote a piece on that is you really have people? Yeah,
hilariously say Jack's house band was led by jazz musician
Tom Scott, who then went on to serve the same
role on the short lived Chevy Chase show. You compare
this to the late night televisual equivalent of the woman
who was on the Titanic when it sank, and then
later on the Titanic's sister ship when it struck her
mind and also sank. Yeah, yeah, there is an afterlife.

(46:57):
She must have been so pissed off.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
Both of them. And she also the Titanic's third sister ship.
A cruiser rammed it, a British naval cruiser call the
HMS Hawk, and it went kind of crippled back to
port with this big hole in it.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
So she was on all three of those.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Is there a fourth one we could get her on?
Violet Jessup is her name. I have a fact about
Violet Jessup that I want to share with you. Years
after her retirement, Jessup claimed to have received a telephone
call on a stormy night from a woman who asked
Jessop if she had saved the baby the night the
Titanic sank. Yes, Jessup replied the voice, then said I

(47:35):
was that baby laughed and hung up her friend. The
biographer said it was most likely some children in the
village playing a joke on her. She replied, no, I'd
never told that story to anyone before. I told you.
Now that's weird. Yeah, it wasn't weird. I like it.
I don't like that. Oh you don't I like it.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
That's weird.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
See again, you're actually huggy. I'm actually into the creepy stuff.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
Oh man, I found a new thing, a new pitch
for our new angle on the for the sixties. Thing
is Did you know the Black Panthers had an official
R and B band?

Speaker 1 (48:07):
No, I didn't tell me more.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
It's called the Lumpin', which is hilarious.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
Wait, how do you spell that?

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Lupe n And They came out of the Oakland chapter,
the original one.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
Oh. The Wikipedia pages a list of their songs. Bobby
must be set free, parenthesis free, Bobby old Pig, Nixon,
Revolution is gonna come. Revolution is the only solution. We
can't wait another day. Set Sister Erica Free. I don't
know who Erica is. Huh. Well.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
Despite receiving an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Art Direction and
featuring a wide range of guests from Leslie Nielsen to
Dolly Parton. Sajax show only ran for a single one
hundred and sixty five episode season from January eighty nine
to April nineteen ninety. To be fair, it was up
against some serious competition. In addition to Carson, it also
had to contend with Late Night with David Letterman and

(48:58):
The Arseniel Hall Show, both of us which had much
more coolness cred. Despite its strong start, it eventually was
dead last in the late show ratings. The network was
not subtle in their displeasure at this They began having
guest hosts one day a week, a move that prompted
Sajack to say years later the show was going so
well that they actually auditioned replacements for me on the air.

(49:18):
One of these guest hotes was Rush Limbaugh, who is
in Hell, which led to an especially contentious bit of television.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
Yes, the episode with Rush Limbaugh aired on March thirtieth,
nineteen ninety, and Yeah, Rush was gonna rush, So, in
a somewhat radical departure from this show's regular format, he
entered out into the audience. He left his desk and
went out into the audience to get a response from
the crowd about a bill that had recently been vetoed
in Idaho that would have restricted abortion. After announcing that

(49:52):
the bill was dead, Limbaugh approached the woman who was
cheering loudly and gave her the mic. This is when
things got tense, and the woman denounced Limbaugh's ti abortion
statements early in the show by saying women's lives are
more important than any potato. I would imagine that's a
jab at Vice President Dan Coyle's famous misspelling of potato.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
Mmm.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
Shelsa said, you don't know what it's about. You'll never
have a baby, you'll never be pregnant, you'll never have
an abortion, all facts. Other members of the crowd chimed
in and began to heckle Rush, leading him to address
the camera and claim that he went into the audience
in an attempt to show the viewing public that there
was an underlying prejudice against him. What a pro u.

(50:34):
The heckling apparently got so bad that he decided to
conduct his next interview with a guest in a different studio.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Ay, come on, I guess you were real. I thought
you were a red blooded American man. Rush.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
It gets so much worse. After the commercial break, Limbaugh
attempted to address the topic of affirmative action, but was
heckled again by several male audience members wearing act UP
T shirts. Act UP is the activist organization of gay man.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
I believe he's as he's awareness. Yeah, they called Rush
a murderer.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
Before he could make his point, Rush sat silently with
the camera focused on him for nearly a minute while
audience members continued shouting phrases like you want people to die.
Limbaugh responded with I'm not responsible for your behavior. After
another commercial break, Limball returned and conducted the final interview
segment after the audience had been cleared. Limbaugh later claimed

(51:32):
that these dissident audience members were planted by the show's
producers as a publicity stunt. It's always the victim. Perhaps
not coincidentally, the Pat Sajac Show was canceled two weeks later.
CBS restored it CBS late night block of movies and reruns,
and would not program another late night talk show until
The Late Show with David Letterman debuted in August nineteen

(51:55):
ninety three, three years later. A talk show wouldn't ever
take over the Pat Sajack Show's old studio until The
Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson moved in twenty two
years later. In September twenty twenty two, as a tribute,
Ferguson installed an autographed publicity photo of say Jack from
the Pat Sajack Show era on The Late Late Show's
faux mantlepiece set, alongside those of Letterman and previous Late

(52:19):
Late Show hosts Tom Schneider and Craig Kilbourne. But lest
you feel bad for say Jack, rest assured that he
came out ahead. His deal called for him to be
paid for two years, regardless of whether or not the
show actually lasted that long. So Pat got sixty thousand
dollars a week for a while for doing nothing, and thankfully,

(52:39):
say Jack's dream of hosting a talk show didn't die completely.
He became a frequent guest host for CNN's Larry King Live,
and also subbed in for Regis Philbit on occasion on
Live with Regis and Kelly. He also had a wide
variety of guest bot cameos over the years, including in
the A Team Just Shoot Me the Commission, which is
a show that I have no recollection of, but apparently

(53:02):
he was on for five years and starred Michael Chickliss,
The Larry Sanders Show, The King of Queens, and a
guest vocal spot on our beloved Rugrats The Commission.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
This is wild, right.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
I have no memory of the show.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
I thought the whole thing about Chickliss was that when
they shoot came out, they just like they had like
plucked him from obscurity.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
I thought so too. It's all for five years. I'm
sure we're gonna get somebody's gona tweet at us. But
like you've ever heard of the commission?

Speaker 2 (53:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (53:29):
Man.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
Jason Alexander said he'd been offered a role in the show,
but turned it down because Seinfeld got picked up for
another season and was the most popular show of all time.
Thank good Lord, the Commission. Wow withither the Commission?

Speaker 1 (53:47):
I know? Well, despite all these guest spots, Pat Sayjack
is fairly adverse to publicity. Until twenty ten, he reportedly
refused to license his face to any sort of Wheel
of Fortune toys, board games, video games, or other merch
because he was concerned about the impact it would have
on his children, which I think is admirable. He turned
on the cover of People magazine while promoting his talk

(54:08):
show in nineteen eighty nine because he didn't want to
be quote any place where one week it's me and
the next week it's John Hinckley, failed President Reagan assassin
John Hinckley and and current musician Yeah, who is requested
to open for the Black Keys, I believe.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
And then Patrick Carney like retweeted it. That is just
the most That whole is just the biggest touchy spot
for me. I hate it so much. I know, I
know it's not fair. I do genuinely think it's irresponsible.
Like I get the idea of restorative justice and everything,
but you know, the parlay that in their music career

(54:49):
is Yeah. And also just that like showing that lone
wolves eventually get what they want after long enough is
a great message to send to other lone wolves. Just
wait it out. After you kill those people, man, it'll
turn around for you. Don't worry. You get out and
a bunch of irony poisoned internet weirdos will make it
make your career happen because they're just happy you tried

(55:11):
to plug the worst president of all time.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
Family is forever.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
I just had a vision of John Hinckley Junior covering fame.
Ah oh, so, Saint Jack is also famous Ford say
bucking the prevailing Hollywood trend of being a liberal. It's
not a huge accident that Rush Limbaugh guest hosted his

(55:36):
talk show Say Jack keeps it off the game show.
But per his Wikipedia, he is an external director of
conservative publishing house Eagle Publishing. Come on, guys, really they
say conservatives have no creativity, but it's right there. He's
been a member of the board of directors for the
Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank, and he's also a

(55:56):
financial supporter of the Young America's Foundation, which sponsors conservative
speakers on college campuses. He has written for the National
Reviews website, and making his debut in twenty ten with
the piece that questions whether or not public employees should
be allowed to vote on issues that would benefit them directly.
I've been told I virtue signal on this show, so

(56:18):
let's just let that one lie out there. No comment.
He also has contributed to the center right socio political
social networking site ricochet dot com, and has written articles
for a website called Human Events, which has featured headlights
like opposed to Obamacare, then you must be a racist.
In a direct quote from his Wikipedia page, it says

(56:41):
that say Jack rejects scientific opinions on climate change end quote,
end quote. And in twenty fifteen, he tweeted, I now
believe global warming alarmists are unpatriotic racists, knowingly misleading for
their own ends. Good night, good day, sir. It's like

(57:02):
when he was alive, James conn who would signed off
everything end of tweet. Yeah, yes, Say Jack elaborated later
on Megan Kelly's The Kelly File that he was quote
just mocking the name calling that is directed at global
warming skeptics within and without the scientific community. More recently,

(57:22):
he posted for iPhoto with GOP representative Marjorie Taylor Green.
All of this led to eight twenty fourteen article and
slawan by Daniel Di Dario, which looks at the phenomenon
of conservatism among game show hosts. Let's quote from it
fairly extensively. Begin quote. Drew Carey of The Price Is
Right has been an outspoken libertarian since his sitcom actor days,

(57:45):
telling Reason Magazine as far as your personal goals are
and what you actually want to do with your life,
it should never have to do with the government. You
should never depend on the government for your retirement, your
financial security, for anything. Bob Barker is better known for
his animal advocacy than for his endorsement of conservative lobbyists
David Jolly in a special House selection in Florida. Chuck

(58:07):
Woolry is as active as say Jack on Twitter and
has written for The Washington Times, which is a notoriously
right wing CounterPunch to the Washington Post. Alex Trebek of
Jeopardy cited in a recent New Republic profile someone speaking
approvingly of the Tea Party. Somebody was saying on television
a few days ago that the Tea Party is a

(58:27):
reflection of the people. There are a lot of people
out there who are not happy with the way things
are going, and they've banded together. He seemed curious about
the arch conservative movement, if not explicitly approving, describing himself
as apolitical, even despite having reportedly hosted a twenty ten
Republican fundraiser. Dadario continues, but is it surprising that these

(58:47):
fellows trend towards Conservatism. For one thing, they're older, affluent,
white men, a group that outside of Hollywood doesn't vote
democratic at least not recently. And these men are as
quote outside of Hollywood as you can get while still
being paid to be on camera. Sayjak has spent decades
suffused in a self consciously retrograde environment in which his
female co host's role is to silently smile in a

(59:08):
brand new evening gown, and his role is to cheer
on contestants to win money on the basis of merit
on game shows. So the thinking goes, there's no such
thing as luck. Indeed, FCC rules prohibit game shows from
stacking the deck in favor of one contestant or another.
And so it is that game show hosts might extrapolate
from their experience that luck is not particularly meaningful, That

(59:28):
accumulation of wealth is based on one's abilities at playing
a game. That's the same for everyone. Articulate, well cited.
What do you think about that? It tracks? I mean,
the whole rich white guy thing is hardly that's like,
that's in every industry, every creative industry. Though, I mean,
good for him, though that. In Sajak's last appearance as
host of the game show, he said he never incorporated

(59:50):
politics into his hosting duties. He said the show included
no social issues, no politics, and was just a game.
This is an easy thing to say about politics when
rich white guy. I'm not saying everyone should insert their
political views into their art, obviously, but you know, I'm
just saying that's a very easy thing to say when

(01:00:11):
you've you have the soft hands of a creative man
your entire life. He served I just like the uh
Tracy Jordan Bitt from A thirty Rocky. He's like trying
to connect to the working man, and he's like, let
me feel the rough skin on your palms.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
Well, we've gone way too far without mentioning our beloved
Vana White, who by all accounts is an honest to
God earth angel. She replaced prior hosts letter turner Susan Stafford,
a veteran of the Woolery Years who stayed with Sajack
for a year before Check's notes, leaving the show to
do humanitarian work. Very Nice. Producers were tasked with finding

(01:00:59):
a replace for her, and Vana White was selected because
she reportedly impressed MERV Griffin during her audition, which consists
of walking gracefully from one side of the room to
the other and turning letters without making a mistake. She
enthralled MERV with her skills. She enthralled her with her acumen.

(01:01:23):
Hannibal Lecter, thrill media with your acumen. I'll thrill it
on that side. That was right, Yeah, and she ended
up getting the job. And also she seems to have
Patsagex's skills self deprecation because she would later say she
was the last of two hundred women to audition, and
the producers went with her because she was last and
they just wanted the process to be over.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
She is, of course selling herself short.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Vana was a game show pro, having appeared on The
Price Is Right soon after moved to LA in nineteen
eighty as a tested not as a model or whatever
you want to call it. But that's not all. She
also appeared on The Dating Game in the seventies, so
she had two game show appearances under her belt when
she auditioned. Despite this prior experience in the game show Realm,

(01:02:08):
Fanna would claim that she was absolutely terrified during her
audition and assumed she bombed. She said, I was probably
the most nervous because they wanted this job so badly.
I couldn't even talk. I could hardly walk. My mouth
was quavering, my knees were shaking. I thought I've blown this.
Her nerves were understandable, because she was a hard up
actress who slept on the floor of her apartment for

(01:02:31):
a time because she couldn't afford a bed. But her
fears proved unfounded and she got the gig. I found
out I got it the day before Thanksgiving nineteen eighty two,
and it was one of the happiest days of my life,
she told Fox News in twenty seventeen. I was sitting
in my apartment when I suddenly got a phone call.
I literally screamed out loud. Fana made her debut on

(01:02:52):
December thirteenth, nineteen eighty two, almost exactly a year after
say Jack made his, and the first ever letter she
turned was my favorite letter, actually a tee six. That's good.
That's very good. Thankfully, She and Pat hit it off immediately,
as she would describe their relationship as quote brotherly and

(01:03:13):
sisterly chemistry. Even so, he's made some comments on air
that have raised some eyebrows and gartered headlines from our
colleagues in the internet news trade. As one episode, Judora Close,
Pat asked Fanna, so, when you're away from the exciting
world of show business. Is there a place you go
to relax? Banna replied, Yeah, to my garden in my backyard.

(01:03:33):
It's peaceful, it's quiet, there's trees, there's birds. How about
you say, Jack responded in deadpan fashion, you don't know this,
but I actually go to your garden. I'm usually there
about two or three in the morning. Don't be alarmed.

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
That's medium funny.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Another time, Pat asked Fanna if she was an opera buff,
which inevitably led to him asking have you ever watched
opera in the buff? That's not go back to more
wholesome times topics. They've reportedly only had one argument about
whether or not it's okay to put ketchup on a
hot dog. Patsay, Jack is from Chicago, and it's against
the laws of God and nature for Chicago style hot

(01:04:11):
dogs to have ketchup. Where do you fall on that?

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Oh, I mean we didn't. I mean I have relatives
in Chicago, but we didn't enforce such purity in Pennsylvania.
I don't really care. It's if you're like again, not
to be this guy, but like, you know, what's in
a hot dog? Who gives a should you put on
it sprinkles and ventanyl on there like I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
There was also an April Fool's Day episode where they
pretended to be married, and all of this makes me
wonder how much of a joke this is the Pat
Say Jack. It's all starting to see him a little,
a little George Michael maybe from maressa development to me,
do we think Pat Say Jack's in love with Manna?

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
Oh yeah, yeah, Okay, it's like the classic forbidden coworker thing.
You know, there's there's just like you're like, you know
for decades, just like simmering in the I mean think
about it the economy and the way that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
That affair with your coworker in this economy.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Well, yes, first one, a hotel room just for noon.
My god, I can't rent Airbnbs by the hour, and
the cleaning fees don't get me started. No, But I mean,
like nobody stays at jobs, like, especially in great creative
industries these days, so like you get what five six
years before your company folds or lays you off. So
it's like, you know, doing it for fifty years, just

(01:05:27):
lusting after someone so tantalizingly out of reach, must have
corroded his soul.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
You have a lot of thoughts about this, which I was.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
I got I could earn my keep somehow.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
You always did well. When Vana's not bantering with Pat
Sachek or revealing letters, her chief duty is clapping. The
Guinness Book of World Records includes her as quote television's
most frequent clapper. She averages more than six hundred claps
per which comes out to nearly five million claps of
the course of forty one seasons. I'm unclear if they

(01:06:06):
factor in the daytime edition of the show, and that
was on too, she was on that as well. I'm
not sure it's all It's all very complicated. She's quoted
as saying, it's hard to believe I don't have callouses.
It feels great to have this achievement. And my kids
are even more impressed than me, are they? And also
on the topic of truly absurd stats. As of twenty nineteen,

(01:06:28):
it's estimated that Vana White has cumulatively walked more than
two thousand miles on the stage revealing letters going back
and forth. Interestingly, Vanna didn't host an episode of the
show's solo until December ninth, twenty nineteen. When regular host
Pat Sajak took a three week hiatus to recover from
emergency intestinal surgery. Van is also apparently a huge crossword

(01:06:51):
puzzle fan, and takes an active role in helping come
up with the puzzles for each game, which I think
is great. And I helped, and she helped. Yeah. We
can't talk about Vanna White without talking about her fashion.
Of course, She's famously outfitted in a different gown each night,
leading to a fervent fan base to eagerly tune in
to see what she's wearing. This has led to a
phenomenon known as Vana Mania. Do you remember this? I

(01:07:15):
kind of like in the early nineties when I would
visit my grandparents who would buy the like National Inquiry
type stuff. I remember Vanna being like a big figure
in that world.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
I'll tell you, brother, I'll tell you one thing. Not
too many people in my circle in Central Pennsylvania picking
up evening gowns.

Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
Well, no, they weren't picking up even gowns, but they
were like, just in all what she was wearing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
No, we our eyes pray.

Speaker 3 (01:07:42):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
I know I rag on Central Pennsylvania a lot, but no,
I don't remember the I don't remember a fashion component
being a part of it. I remember people like obviously,
like I said, I grew up with her as this
like figure of glamour, so that's probably like thinking of
Anna White means glamorous, beautiful woman. But like, I don't
remember it being particularly like relegate, who does it was
like Dala Renta or like you know, Ferragamo, like anybody important.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
I mean, it's just like Calvin Klein collection that I
could get at Marshall's.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
Well, I mean, I don't know, but I mean I
probably everybody. Because the popular lore states that she's never
repeated address in her forty plus years on the show,
which isn't strictly true. She actually repeated one in September
twenty twenty, and there's actually a short video about it
on the Wheel of Portie and social accounts in which
she admits that she's finally repeating an outfit, and she

(01:08:30):
sighs and says that it's quote so twenty twenty, as
in yet another terrible thing to happen in a terrible year.
Despite this horrific setback of repeating an outfit, Fana White
has worn upwards of eight thousand dresses over the years,
so I would absume she had something from everybody. During
the show's season, she goes to fittings every two weeks

(01:08:53):
and tries on between forty and sixty tresses. I've worn everything,
White said, everything from slinky to ty to sequence, the satin,
whatever it may be. Her favorite, she says, are the
comfortable ones, and if one's too tight, I'm only wearing
them for thirty minutes. I just hold my breath for
thirty minutes. That's horrifying. But this is this is cute.

(01:09:16):
Pat I guess matches his tie to Vana's dress, which
it's like a prom company. Yeah, it's a prom couple
down bad Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
Oh she uh for a week straight, she were Bob Mackie.
Oh cool. Christian Serrano has designed for her?

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
Is he the guy who did piss Christ?

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
That's Damien Hurst. I thought no, No, Christian Serrano was
on Project Runway.

Speaker 1 (01:09:41):
That was Andre Serrano. Excuse me?

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
We everget the error.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
Piss Christ for piss Christ for those of you to
go for going from Vana White gowns to uh, piss
Christ is the work of American artist and photographer Andre Serrano. Uh.
He's a perceptual artist. It's a piece that depicts a
small plastic crucifists submerged in a small glass tank of
the artists owned urine.

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):
It's quite a beautiful photo.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
Actually, kis christ I mean it kind of those It
wasn't called that people would like it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):
Does it does what it says on the Yeah, she
has her own page on the website where you can
see each dress.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
Actually, wait, how far back does it go?

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
I think it's just through the week. Although there is
a there is a there is a substantial uh uh
archival photo backist. There's a substantial pischrist on the page. No,
there is a Vanna's Choice of yarn.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
Yeah, we talk about that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
Yeah, Vana White she has her own uh.

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):
Well, she's a big crochet. I don't know what the
term is. Yeah, crochets, thank you. Uh. And so she
owns her own line of yarn called Vana's Choice, which
she donates a portion of the proceeds to Saint Jude's
Children's Research Hospital, which is again she's an angel. Sadly,
Van does not get to keep any of her gowns,

(01:11:02):
so the production does loan them out to her if
she has a charity event, promotional appearance, she said in
twenty twenty three, I don't even know if I have
a sequined gown in my closet.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
Tragic.

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
However, some think she does have a lot of our
classic cars. A woman after my own heart. She's an
avid collector, with her two favorites being a nineteen fifty
seven Thunderbird very nice and a nineteen eighty two Rolls
Royce Silver Spur also very nice.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
Looks like she's a stylist for the Show's a guy
named Johnny Woojack or Woodjack who's worked with a lot
of different celebrities, including Katie, your beloved Katy Perry. He's
from Detroit. Oh, he did the cupcake and functioning whipped
cream bras for Katy Perry.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
Oh no way, Well one is that fired?

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):
Yeah? Exactly?

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
That is very cool. Well, Vana, why can't afford to
get all the cars in yarn she wants? Because her
net worth is estimated at around eighty five million. Heigel
tell us about how she got.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
There, will thank you, Vanna. Her salary for Wheel was
reportedly ten million dollars a year, but she makes upwards
a fifteen million by licensing her name and image for
casino slot machines. Yeh did not have that one on
my on my bingo card. As of twenty twenty two,
there were two hundred and fifty iterations of Wheel of

(01:12:19):
Fortune slot machines in use that have paid out more
than three point three billion since their debut in nineteen
ninety six. That is oil money, that's farma money. Holy,
this country has a problem. In twenty twenty three, story
made the rounds that Vanna had hired the services of
the highly aggressive Big League attorney Brian Friedman. This report

(01:12:42):
stated that White's last rays on the job had come
some eighteen years before, and that she had instead enjoyed
lucrative but inconsistent bonuses attached to her initial contract. It
also highlighted an alleged gap in her pay compared to SAJAX.
It was one source that said she was making three
million to Say Jack's ten million, but then she successfully

(01:13:03):
renegotiated her deal for the celebrity Will of Fortune spin off,
netting one hundred grand an episode to say Jack's four
hundred thousand, which sources told TMZ was quote a meaningful bump,
and TMZ knows about meaningful bumps. Harvey Levin was our
guest on Paulin could at a yeah, you sent me
the you sent me the edit room happening. Man, That's

(01:13:25):
that's my day, okay. Apparently for the syndicated wheel show,
she wants fifty percent of what say Jack made. No
TMZ was not forthcoming about what his his salary exactly is.
It's clear that they aren't willing to go that high
with her. There was a report in The New York
Post today you mentioned that as of taping, White is

(01:13:47):
allegedly having difficulties working without say Jack. The source told
Daily Mail there's a part of her that wanted to
walk away sooner. It's just so difficult to do this
without Pat vana Field. She has put her time in.
He wants the show to continue. This will require a
younger female host, someone who can be to Ryan, which
she was to Pat. Another source claim that she has

(01:14:08):
problems working with Seacrest, saying she doesn't jibe with Ryan
like she did with Pat, and no one really ever
expected her to make of that what you will.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
That makes me sad.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
I mean, who could deal with Ryan Seacrest. He's a vacuum.
You said earlier, that's his whole thing's being inoffensively on air,
taking up space.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
He must have so much money, so much money, He's
a back end of Kardashians. Yeah, according to Parade, half
a billion dollars billion with a bee sounds about right?

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
Who all right? Well, speaking of bad things, a Vanah
White took on Playboy in nineteen eighty seven. She appeared
on the cover of Playerboy wearing only a long sleeved shirt,
and the inside I had spread featured her semi nude
in suggestive poses. That's my new Twitter bio by the way. However,

(01:15:06):
White didn't pose for the magazine. The photos were actually
from nineteen eighty two and were taken immediately prior to
her getting the Wheel of Fortune gig. That's low by Playboy.
I would have thought that was a more of a
penthouse move.

Speaker 1 (01:15:17):
Well, that's what they did with Marilyn Monroe. The photos
of Maryland on the first episode of first issue a
Playboy they purchased she had done years earlier, Like many
years earlier.

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):
I think, nice, What a great industry. When I first
moved to Hollywood, she said, I was too embarrassed to
ask my dad for rent money. I was young, and
I wanted to do it. On my own, so I
did these lingerie shots, and from the moment I said
I would do them, I thought I shouldn't be doing this,
but I'm not going to ask my dad for money,
so I'm just going to do it. These pictures were

(01:15:47):
then purchased by Half once she'd been made famous, and
he misrepresented it to look like she'd agreed to appear
in the magazine. White subsequently fouled a five point two
million dollar lawsuit against Playboy, claiming the photos quote tarnish
her image as a modest, wholesome, attractive, and innocent all
American girl, and she also sued Hefner in federal court. Eventually,
White dropped both lawsuits, claiming a statement that Playboy's promotion

(01:16:11):
efforts have led the public to believe that the photographs
are more revealing and provocative than they actually are. Been
Post reported in nineteen eighty seven, non publication of the
photographs under these circumstances may very well be more damaging
to me in my career than the injury which I
will undoubtedly suffer from publication. After the issues hit newsstands,
as The Post reported, she went on Johnny Carson apologized

(01:16:34):
for her lacy wrongdoing, incredible work by that copy editor
and begged the public for forgiveness. Lacy wrongdoing. I've had
a couple of those in my life. But things turned
around for Vanna. Aside from her immense riches and half

(01:16:55):
assed job. Oh come on, let me say the quiet
part out loud.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
She seems like a nice person.

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):
That's great for her. Nice people can profit from a
system that rewards nothing. Miss too.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
She got a shout out from Nelly O that see Nelly,
friend of the pod Nelly in the song ride with me,
Nellie Raps.

Speaker 2 (01:17:20):
Can I make it damn right? I'd be on the
next flight pan cash first class, sit next to Vana White.

Speaker 1 (01:17:27):
You could have done that better. I just want to
say no.

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):
I like doing it. The podcaster Cadence R Cadence, it's
a chart and reading.

Speaker 1 (01:17:35):
The ice tailor Die Die Die Die.

Speaker 2 (01:17:37):
Die Die Pig Die. For years, Vanna didn't understand why
she'd made it into his song. She would say, I
was at an Easter party years ago and Nelly was
at that party side note what party oral history on
that party? When I went up to him and I said,
did we ever sit next to each other on an airplane?

(01:17:57):
And he said, no, it just run true story. She
then added, my kids were blown away. They thought I
was really cool that I was in a Nelly song
on the radio. That was one of the highlights of
my career for my children, like, wow, mom, great song.
I was popular on that one. I get a big
kick out of it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
It was almost as cool as I'm learning that I
clapped my way into the Guinness Book of World Records.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
What was the methodology behind that?

Speaker 1 (01:18:21):
I mean, I don't know. She does clap for like
most of her time on the show. I guess are
the counting them? Did they have something every single episode?
Oh well, I mean that I don't know. It might
have just been on average. They might have taken an
average for a couple of seasons.

Speaker 2 (01:18:37):
That's a lazy reporting, Guinness.

Speaker 1 (01:18:39):
My guess is that somebody like just made an assumption.
Hm hm uh. Well, here's a real clunker of a transition.
But Vana White didn't just get piles of cash from
her time on Wheel of Fortune. She also got crucial
support from fans during some of the most difficult times

(01:19:01):
in her life. In nineteen eighty six, she was preparing
to marry her longtime boyfriend Josh Gibson, who my notes
tell me was a nationally famous Chippendale dancer, sculptor and
carpenter who'd appeared on the soap opera The Young and
the Restless and also had a bit part in The Warriors.
So up there with Merv Griffin in terms of being

(01:19:21):
a whole brains guy, I needless to say, a soap
star hunk dating a game show queen was tabloid gold
in the mid eighties and their relationship was huge news.
But then the single engine plane Gibson was piling crash
during its final approach to Van Nuys Airport in nineteen
eighty six, and he was killed right before they were
due to be married. His body was burned so badly

(01:19:44):
that they could only identify him through using dental records.
After taking a brief leave of absence from Will of Fortune,
White helped heal thanks to wheel fans. She told our
friends at People Magazine. I think it was our friend
Jillian telling Actually I heard from so many people who'd
share the the same experience of losing someone instantly in
an accident, and that really helped me. I didn't feel

(01:20:05):
like I was alone, because when something like that happens
you immediately think you're the only one. She would draw
on the strength of fans once again in nineteen ninety two.
By this point, she had married restauranteur George Santo Pietro,
and she was thrilled to announce her pregnancy in the
most fitting way possible, a puzzle on we La Fortune
that revealed the message Vana's pregnant. She would later say,

(01:20:27):
I so wanted to be pregnant and have a baby,
so then when I finally got pregnant, I wanted to
tell the world immediately. But a week after revealing her
pregnancy on the show, she suffered a miscarriage. Obviously, I
lost the baby, which is devastating after announcing it losing
a child, she says, there's nothing good about that. The
good news is that I was able to get pregnant
again and had two beautiful, healthy children. She's the mother

(01:20:50):
to son Nico, born in nineteen ninety four and daughter Gigi,
born in nineteen ninety seven. H Jesus Christ, Well, all
that makes this next part a little more understandable. Apparently,
Vanna and Pat would throw back quite a few drinks
between tapings, at least earlier in their career. This revelation
came from Sajack during a twenty twelve appearance on Dan

(01:21:11):
Lebtard's ESPN two show Highly Questionable. LeBatard asked if he'd
ever that's a really hard name is say, asked if
he'd ever been drunk while taping the show, and Sajack's response, Vana,
and I would have two or three or six drinks
and then come and do the last shows and have
trouble recognizing the alphabet. I had a great time. I
have no idea if the shows were any good, but

(01:21:31):
no one said anything, so I guess I did, Okay.
I seem to remember that this revelation. Do you remember
this like led to all these headlines that basically compared
Wheel of Fortune to like Saturday Night Live in the seventies,
which is emphatically not true. But remember this made like
a lot of news when this came out. Really yeah,
that was like my first like two or three years

(01:21:53):
working in the blogosphere. It was the Obama years. Things were,
things were a lot calmer than Celebrities hadn't really figured
out Twitter as a place to vent their poorly thought
out ideas.

Speaker 2 (01:22:04):
And that's wild man.

Speaker 1 (01:22:10):
We're gonna take a quick break but we'll be right
back with more too much information in just a moment.
Now we're going to talk about the real star of
the show, the Wheel, the famous Wheel of Fortune, you'll remember,

(01:22:32):
weighs two four hundred pounds and is equipped with more
than two hundred computerized lights which can turn up to
two million different colors. And didn't even know it were
two million different colors. It gets its trademark thudding ticking
sound from seventy three stainless steel pins that fly past
three rubber flippers, and because of the wheel's unexpected heaviness,

(01:22:54):
all contestants are given a practice spin before taping.

Speaker 2 (01:22:57):
Is it made in America? Oh? Oh yeah, I guess
with say jack, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:23:02):
Yeah, oh yeah. Given all these intricacies, there's only one wheel,
only one wheel and one puzzle board. It's just like Highlander.
There can be only one The wheel and the game
board must be broken down and put back together. Whenever
the show goes on the road, which is fairly often,
that's gonna be a real hassle. The show travels with
more than one million pounds of equipment to tape in

(01:23:24):
locations all across the country, and these excursions sent them
back almost two million dollars each time. The show must
mint money between transit costs prize money.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):
Say Jack and White's salary. That's that's nuts. That's five
hundred tons. Yeah, that's two hundred and fifty elephants worth
of crap. Taylor Swift equipment.

Speaker 1 (01:23:50):
Oh, I like where your head's going.

Speaker 2 (01:23:53):
Taylor has It takes eighty four trucks to hold the
equipment for one set. There's a post of it for
Tailor Swift. Yeah, a year ago with all of these
trucks lined up, and to end, it looks like a
It looks like an Amazon warehouse. This makes the wall
of sound look like a Bluetooth speaker. I can't find Tonnage,
but the Era's tour had a fleet of ninety trucks

(01:24:16):
that cost five hundred thousand a week.

Speaker 1 (01:24:18):
That sounds low to me.

Speaker 2 (01:24:19):
She wrote each truck driver a bonus check of one
hundred thousand before the end of the tour. That's kind
of nuts. Yeah, it says the bonus. Because there were
fifty drivers associated with the tour, it was about five
million dollars worth. But you know the tour made a
billion dollars. Oh, here you go. As of twenty fifteen.
The worldwide freight forwarder for the Tailor Swift Tour that

(01:24:41):
year was six hundred and thirty five tons, So suck it.
Wheel of fortune. You don't have as much as Tailor.

Speaker 1 (01:24:52):
But do they have the wheel?

Speaker 2 (01:24:53):
That she does not have the wheel? Jordan, But does
she have the wheel? You don't understand. This has always
been about the wheel. There's nothing else but the wheel.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
Just like picturing the opening of Raiders with the lost arc,
but instead of a bowlder, it's just the wheel fortune, wheel.

Speaker 2 (01:25:11):
Oh man, too funny? Am I supposed to be talking?

Speaker 1 (01:25:14):
No, no, no, I was waiting for a bigger laugh
that never came.

Speaker 2 (01:25:19):
Again. My Twitter bio.

Speaker 1 (01:25:24):
The wheel's co star is, of course, the puzzle board.
There are four rows of letters, with twelve spots on
the top and bottom rows, and fourteen across the two
middle rows. The longest puzzle to date. This will interest
you Here, This will interest you was reportedly she just
won a seventh US Figure Skating Championship, which should use
forty seven characters, including spaces. The puzzle with the most

(01:25:46):
characters not counting spaces is Hershey Bar Graham cracker, gooey
roasted marshmallow with forty six characters that paid for a
move to get that wheel across the country.

Speaker 2 (01:25:57):
What the fuck does that mean?

Speaker 1 (01:25:58):
Hershey Bar Graham Cracker. I don't know. Maybe his words
are in the Bible. I mean it's a recipe for
us some more, But I don't know why that would
have been used. Og Wheel fans know that for many years,
the game board was manual, with letters that had to
be spun around by hand, hence the reason Vanah White

(01:26:19):
has a job. But then this changed when producer Harry
Friedman took over the show in nineteen ninety five. He
was frustrated by the fact that it took an hour
to take a half hour show, and he soon discovered
that this was due to the letter board having to
be reset manually after every puzzle. Eventually, in February nineteen
ninety seven, a new electronic board was introduced, which featured

(01:26:41):
fifty two touch screens, helping to shave the recording time
down to thirty minutes. But he also executive produced Jeopardy,
which was more in the thirty minute range, so I
think he was probably like using that as as the yardstick,
and then when he retired, they got that Mike Richards
guy that created the whole succession crisis on Jeopardy.

Speaker 2 (01:27:03):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (01:27:04):
Yeah. There's also a smaller screen off camera for Pat Sajak,
which indicates how many times a chosen letter appears in
the puzzle. That's why he was like, we got two bees.
He's not like sitting there pointing and counting it out
in the early days of the show. My god, I
mean for fifty million dollars a year. Yeah, so this
is great. Though, for the early days of the show,

(01:27:26):
somebody from the production sat off camera and held up
fingers to signal the pat, and they became known as fingerboys.

Speaker 2 (01:27:34):
Hey, just like at the Vatican.

Speaker 1 (01:27:44):
Okay, we'll move off of that. Sadly, the fingerboys became
a victim of automation, but thankfully then it endures. Nevertheless,
she persisted, contestants have a similar screen out of view
that lists all the letters have been guessed, so they
don't have to endure the embarrassment of asking for the
same letter twice. And as we will touch on, there

(01:28:06):
are plenty of other ways for contestants to embarrass themselves
on this show, but we'll get to that later. Here's
a fun fact that doesn't really fit anywhere else. The
price of a vowel has been adjusted for inflation over
the course of the forty years of this show. It's
still only two hundred and fifty dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:28:22):
Now, that's good, damn bargain.

Speaker 1 (01:28:24):
I know, I know.

Speaker 2 (01:28:26):
That's why I just knocked over my microphone.

Speaker 1 (01:28:30):
Speaking of things that are equal, there's also a platform
to ensure that all contestants on this show are the
same height.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
I'm gonna go ahead and say, say Jack short, right,
I think so.

Speaker 1 (01:28:41):
Yeah. I think that's why he made a joke about
it when he when he first came. Yeah, that's all
is a.

Speaker 2 (01:28:46):
Five ten, perfectly cromulent height to be. This is according
to W. Lky in twenty fifteen, say Jack said, in
the early seasons of the show, they put shorter testants
on risers so that they could see over the podium.
It's been the wheel. But what happened was that had
the effect of making say Jack seem much shorter than

(01:29:07):
he was, because he said he I would walk next
to a great grandmother on the show, and I would
walk next to her and people thought I was a jockey.
So now we are on risers and when they go up,
I go up and we stayed the same size, but
it got ingrained in people that I was about four
foot three. The other factor in this would be that
fan of White is of course fine heels and on heels,

(01:29:28):
but he just radiates short guy energy.

Speaker 1 (01:29:32):
Now we have to talk about the necessary evil of
Wheel of Fortune, the contestants. Since nineteen ninety five, the
show has been filmed at the Sony Picture Studios in
Culver City, California, right next door to the Jeopardy sound stage,
and I believe the same sound stage if I recall correctly,
that was it of Oz was filmed. So it's Hella
haunted because they share many of the same crew. Wheel

(01:29:55):
has a tape on a different day than Jeopardy. An
entire season of Wheel of Fortune is filmed in less
than forty days. They shoot one day a week, with
five or six shows filmed per day. That's a good
I like that. More than ten thousand people try out
each year to get on the show, but fewer than
six hundred get selected. To date, over one million fans

(01:30:17):
have applied for a chance to be contestant on the show.
To get on Wheel, the first thing you have to
do is fill out an online application, which is free
to submit. The form must include a short personal video, however,
which sounds cringe as hell. The one quality the casting
department looks for, of course, is confidence. As per the
show's website, it's important that the game show moves along

(01:30:40):
quickly and that the players are decisive in calling out
their letters with a strong, confident voice and in choosing
their game strategy parentheses, whether to spin by a vow
or solve the puzzle. It's all about strategy.

Speaker 2 (01:30:52):
What should I do by a vowel?

Speaker 1 (01:30:54):
It's cheap? Okay, the one they're going to go up
in value? Yeah, it's free real estate, Yes, verbal real estate.
The vetting process for Wheel of Fortune is surprisingly strict.
There are a number of criteria that will immediately disqualify
a contested from eligibility. Any person who's previously appeared on

(01:31:15):
any incarnation of the show, even teen week, can't be
a contestant. Anyone who's appeared on a game show or
reality show in the last year or three shows in
the last ten years is also ineligible. Also, you can't
work for or be related to anyone who's any connection
to the show. I think these are all vestiges of
the quiz show scandals in the fifties when it became

(01:31:37):
went all the way to the Senate floor investigating shows
that proved to be rigged, and that was racketeering.

Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
What's the official term for that is fraud? I think, yeah, Now,
racketeering is I think it wasn't like a numbers charge,
but because it had such strong interstate trafficking penalties, that's
how they ended up getting all those guys atually thrown away.

Speaker 1 (01:32:00):
Backteering is a type of organized crime in which the
perpetrator is set up a coercive, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise
a legal, coordinated scheme or operation to repeatedly or consistently
collect a profit. So it's just a scam. Scamming. It's
a fancy term for scamming.

Speaker 2 (01:32:14):
I guess, oh, yeah, here it is the nineteen seventy
reco Act. It means any criminal scheme or operation with
ongoing or reoccurring profit, so all of them. Yeah, it
was codified in nineteen seventy to come against the mafia.
Just so much Italian American discrimination in this country. I

(01:32:36):
knew you were going there.

Speaker 1 (01:32:38):
Also, there's discrimination against Canadians, un least as far as
Wheels Fortune is concerned, well, I mean, per the online application,
Wheel of Fortune is not currently accepting any contestants from Canada.
That must not have sat well with famed Canadian Olestra
back just a show host.

Speaker 2 (01:32:55):
I'm trying to think of anything I could say about that,
about relating to like rush.

Speaker 1 (01:32:59):
Zare a white Why is he joke in there? But
why why z?

Speaker 2 (01:33:03):
I know, yes, let's break these stats down into cold
hard cash.

Speaker 1 (01:33:07):
Though.

Speaker 2 (01:33:08):
Since its syndication debut in nineteen eighty three, Wheel has
awarded more than two hundred client Wheel Like it's a propert.

Speaker 1 (01:33:14):
I know, it's really funny.

Speaker 2 (01:33:16):
Call me Wheel. My father was mister Fortune. Wheel has
awarded more than two hundred and fifty million dollars in
cash and prize to its contestants. According to production, The
most money ever Wondering regular gameplay occurred on December twenty sixth,
twenty fourteen. The lucky contestant was Matt de Santos. He
managed to win a record ninety eight hundred and ninety

(01:33:37):
two dollars before the bonus round. Amazingly, he guessed one
of the first puzzles with just one letter E turned over,
and then every puzzle after. He didn't end up winning
the bonus round, but his payday was the largest main
game win in the show's history. Now, this doesn't include
the occasions when the game is played with a million
dollar wedge. Since his introduction in two thousand and eight,

(01:33:59):
there have been contestants who have hit it big. The
first winner Michelle Lowenstein one on August eighth, two thousand
and eight, eight eight eight, which incidentally was one month
and a day after getting married. She won the one million,
twenty six thousand and eighty dollars prize shortly after returning
from her honeymoon, and her final puzzle was leaky faucet.

(01:34:22):
I'm not gonna make a joke there. She was the
biggest payout until May of twenty thirteen, when Autumn Earnhard
Autumn Earnhard, that sounds like a Nazi rocket scientist the
government hired took home a million dollars one million, thirty thousand,
and three hundred and forty dollars after she guessed the
phrase tough workout with only four letters on the board.

(01:34:45):
See that's I think this gets at my heart of
like the what I don't like about Wheel is how
stupid these all are. Yeah, it's like the New York Times.
It's the inverse of the New York Times Crossword where
they go out of their way to make in like
obnoxiously obtuse dominym or frasal or idiomatic jokes that just
like make you want to strangle Will Shortz. This is

(01:35:06):
just dumb, like your tough workout.

Speaker 1 (01:35:11):
You're right, I mean, And we'll get to that in
the section of screw ups on this show, basically where
there are some phrases that are just like, that's not
that's not a phrase.

Speaker 2 (01:35:21):
Anyway. That was on top of the other thirty grand
that Frauline Amhod took home earlier on the show a
year after autumn in.

Speaker 1 (01:35:32):
Twenty fourteen, from the makers of five hundred Days of
Summer Comes a year after Autumn.

Speaker 2 (01:35:41):
Math teacher Sarah Manchester rounded out the top three with
a one million, seventeen, four hundred and ninety dollars in earnings.
So she won the prize during Wheel of Fortune's Teachers
Week with the puzzle loud laughter in stupid riots laughter.
That's definitely one thing sure like loud. On the flip

(01:36:01):
side of all this, we have the most unlucky person
to ever win or to ever play Wheel of Fortune.
Obviously he did not win. His name is James Puster.
That's a weak name, and he appeared on the episode
that aired on March tenth, nineteen ninety eight. He was
the first person to hit bankrupt on the wheel four
separate times. He was greeted after the show by the
producers who informed him of this dubious honor. Reportedly, he

(01:36:24):
never watched the game show again after that experience, and indeed,
Wheel of Fortune can be a cruel game. For example,
the episode that aired on April ninth, twenty eighteen, when
one unfortunate contestant lost all of the money he'd earned
that round by mispronouncing a word. The solution was Flamenco
dance lessons, but the man pronounced Flamenco as flamingo. Well,

(01:36:46):
that's fine, you got the word wrong. That's a different word.
That's what that means. Words have meaning, I bet, he says. Supposedly,
oh oh, come on, one says that people do Sayjak
even promised to review the footage during a commercial break
to be sure, but the mispronunciation was clear and he
lost it all. This is sad. The mess ups but

(01:37:09):
as we mentioned, sometimes the contestants deserve it. Another case
in point would be the Indiana University suit who participated
during one of the College Edition episodes. He had had
every single letter up on the board and all he
had to do was read it aloud to solve the puzzle.
The answer was mythological hero Achilles. In instantly viral moment,
he said, mythological hero Atus.

Speaker 1 (01:37:34):
That okay, it's like every syllable on that was pronouncing correctly.

Speaker 2 (01:37:42):
He did not win. He made similar other boner movies
as you write in the show as well, notably guessing
on the spot dice spin one word instead of on
the spot decision. One of the great delights of watching
Real Unfortune is indeed to see the chance of some
truly hilarious boner moments on television. And Jordan, you know

(01:38:06):
you've been on a game show, so grading on a curve,
how how big of boner moments are these?

Speaker 1 (01:38:12):
Truly they're pretty big. I mean, I know, I was
on whos Topay a millionaire and I I'm not a millionaire,
so clearly I made a boner move or to myself.
But yeah, no, I mean it's obviously tough like your
brain does weird things when you're you know, in the
center of the stage and everyone's looking at you and
the lights are all on you and the cameras are
on you and stuff. But these are these are pretty bad.

Speaker 2 (01:38:34):
Hit me.

Speaker 1 (01:38:36):
Let's see. One answer was a list of the seven Dwarves,
but instead of Sneezy, the contest that said sneaky, which
I guess when you think about it, makes just as
much sense as sneezy. During one puzzle, contestant thought the
painted desert was the pointed desert, which isn't so bad.
But then they moved on to the next contestant, who
I guess wasn't listening because then he also said the

(01:38:57):
pointed desert.

Speaker 2 (01:38:59):
That's funny.

Speaker 1 (01:38:59):
This is my favorite. One time the answer was self portrait,
and someone said self potato. The answer was all you
can eat taco bar, and the contestant suggested all you
can eat tape bar.

Speaker 2 (01:39:12):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:39:14):
The answer of the answer was magic wand and the
contest suggested magic janned J, A and T, which no
is not a word. No.

Speaker 2 (01:39:24):
The guy was just from Philly. He was saying magic John.

Speaker 1 (01:39:29):
The answer was playing a practical joke, and the contestant
guest playing a practical move, which is kind of a
great that's a good phrase. The answer was cell phone
charger and the contestant guest cell phone charter like the
Magna carta Hm. The answer was leather wallet and a
contestant guest leather mullet, which spiritually makes a certain amount

(01:39:53):
of sense.

Speaker 2 (01:39:53):
I feel like it's always been that way.

Speaker 1 (01:39:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:39:57):
The answer was go to the front of the line,
and a contestant guest go to the front of the cave.
Was this Plato? The answer was custard filled chocolate eclaire,
the contestant guest mustard filled chocolate Eclaire. He must have
been from Chicago as well. The answer was wish list

(01:40:18):
and a contestant guest fish love not touching that one either.
Another time, the answer was a street car named Desire.
All though was left to say on the board was
the m named instead the contestant guest k which would
have yielded the title a streetcar Naked Desire. Without missing

(01:40:38):
a beat, Sayjack attempted to make the guy feel better
by saying, I'd rather see your play. That's a good bit,
that's carson esque.

Speaker 1 (01:40:45):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:40:46):
Kevin was later invited on Ellen, where it was revealed
that neither he nor his wife had ever heard of
the play and movie, starring two of the most famous
actors of all time. Ellen gave him five thousand dollars
in redemption money after playing a game on her show.

Speaker 1 (01:41:02):
And promising to read the damn play.

Speaker 2 (01:41:04):
How Nice? Why don't You take Us home?

Speaker 1 (01:41:07):
H Vana White's favorite fail, which she has frequently cited
in interviews for decades, was when the answer was gone
with the wind and the contestant guests done with one hand. Unfortunately,
capping off all these great fails, I regret to inform
you that one of the great myths of Wheel of
Fortune is not true. Oh you should take this.

Speaker 2 (01:41:27):
For sure, I mean, yeah, that's myth bust, Yeah, myth bust.
For years, the story has made the rounds, complete with
crudely edited photo and video footage of contestants trying to
guess the phrase luck be in the air tonight just
not a phrase? Nope, sure isn't. Instead, a contestant supposed
the offers me and the ass tonight. Snopes has revealed

(01:41:48):
this to be a fake, which makes sense because again,
luck be in the air tonight is not a phrase.
Although that hasn't stopped the puzzle makers of Wheel of
Fortune at their cruel game. Just last year, social media
was up in arms when a contestant lost out on
a new Volkswagen when she failed to guess obtaining my goals,

(01:42:09):
which is not that's not even the correct use of
that word. That's not even containing an idiot I doesn't exist.
You can't obtain something that's like an intangible set of
moving once. Yea, these people work for network. Well I
just said it. These people work for network tells God
does what it says in the ten obtaining my goals

(01:42:31):
reads like they probably have. They have chat gpt doing
this by now, that's what that is.

Speaker 1 (01:42:37):
But while we all of Fortune has given us some
truly rough moments that made us question Darwinism and our
faith in humanity, there have been some sweet instances as well.
I'm thinking of a woman named Nera Facano, a former
military vet who appeared on the show in twenty fifteen.
She was completely dominating throughout her episode, racking up thirteen
nine hundred and seventy dollars. Nero's competition had like four

(01:43:00):
and another guy had nothing sat at zero. That's when
the final spin occurred, and the contestants had one final
shot at solving a puzzle and adding to their totals,
and it was relatively clear at that point in the
game that it would be very difficult for anyone to
beat Neurra unless they accurately guessed every letter, while Nearra
failed at guessing any letters or solving the puzzle, so

(01:43:22):
to kick a couple bucks to this guy who had nothing,
she threw the game. Next time around, she guessed the
letter Z, one of the least used letters in the alphabet.
Pat was so stunned that he asked her to repeat herself,
to which Nerros confidently replied Z as in Zulu. Nea
would go on to miss her turn by not replying
next time around, guessing the letter Q after that, and

(01:43:45):
the letter X after that, and then she would miss
her last guess by just saying uh. And after the
final puzzle was solved, Sejak congratulated all the contestants for
taking home cash and said to Nera, you called some
unusual letters in that last round, and Nero was quick
to respond with, oh, that's just what I saw. That

(01:44:06):
answer didn't satisfy Pat, and he said, well, that's an
unsatisfactory answer. But you're not under oath here, and there's
nothing I can do. Nero was the big winner on
the show that day. She was Solve and Clues with
like only two or three letters up on the board,
so it became clear to most viewers that she threw
the final round of the game. So they contested with
no money, who also happened to be a fellow veteran

(01:44:27):
could have a chance to take home some money as well.
And I think that's nice. Yeah, that is nice, is it?
I wonder if they killed some people together. Where was
she stationed? That's about all I got on Wheel Fortune.
The wheel's going to keep on turning. I think it's
back in the fall with Seacrest aired over eight thousand episodes,

(01:44:50):
the longest running syndicated game show currently on television, thirty
million viewers each week. Can't be wrong, It sure.

Speaker 2 (01:44:57):
Can't, Jordan, Except for all of the ways we said
in it was, I'm Alex.

Speaker 1 (01:45:03):
Heigel, I'm Jordan Runtog. We'll catch you next time. Too
Much Information was a production of iHeart Radio. The show's
executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtogg.

Speaker 2 (01:45:19):
The show's Supervising producer is Michael Alder.

Speaker 1 (01:45:21):
June.

Speaker 2 (01:45:22):
The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtog
and Alex Heigel.

Speaker 1 (01:45:26):
With original music by Seth Applebaum and a Ghost Funk orchestra.
If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
us a review. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
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Host

Jordan Runtagh

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Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

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